On 17 Jan 98 at 17:54, John Kirriemuir wrote:

> ANR services: call to arms. 
> Just in case people/ANR services have missed it, there is a somewhat
> crucial debate going on on lis-elib at the moment: Think this is the
> point where ANR people might want to point out their collaborators,
> section editors and the like. It would be good if all the ANR
> services replied to this one? 


EEVL is delighted if webmasters and librarians submit 
useful sites to us, and, like OMNI, we receive many of these.  I think
that most of the best sites listed on departmental web pages are
already in the EEVL database, apart from very specialised listings
like the aerospace gateway at Cranfield.  EEVL actually decided not to
focus on aerospace resources because the Cranfield gateway was so
good, and we therefore made a link to it.

EEVL has as part of its development team six subject librarians who
catalogue sites on a regular  basis, and have investigated the
possibility of enlisting the help of other volunteers.  We have 
(almost) concluded that it would be very time-consuming to train more
webmasters/subject librarians to catalogue EEVL records, and that we
can better ensure quality if a lot of the actual cataloguing is done
centrally.  

We are very happy for people to submit sites to us - and 
spend a lot of time on promotion to ensure that the departments and
libraries know about us, and can judge whether to link to EEVL or
maintain their own resource listings or do both.  However, much 
remains to be done on that front, and EEVL will be concentrating on 
promoting the service to academic engineers in the coming months.

Anyone who tries to duplicate what the ANR services do is fighting a
losing battle and wasting their time.  The gateways are bound to be
more comprehensive than local lists, and they are searchable and  
updated daily.  However, local lists can still be very useful, and 
can point to the a smaller number of good sites which are of 
particular interest to their institution - the "core" sites and local 
sites.   As long as the web pages contain a link to the appropriate 
gateway, then the best needs of the user are met. 

As an aside - perhaps people maintain their own web pages as the
future of  the ANR services is, shall we say, uncertain?

Just a joke, of course.

Linda Kerr

Linda Kerr
EEVL Project Officer, Heriot-Watt University Library
Edinburgh  EH14 4AS UK                          

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